Tag Archives: watercolor paper

Hi everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend–I know I sure did. We spent all day Saturday and Sunday at my daughter’s basketball tournament, so Monday was a welcome break 🙂 Although we did end up spending most of it out car shopping… my vehicle is getting up there in miles and it’s time to replace it.

Anyhoo….I’ve been a bit sidetracked from my LifeBook class over the last 2 months. I’ve really been wanting to master doing faces and when I saw the Facecinating Girls 3 week online course from Andrea Gomoll, I decided to jump in. What I love about this class (other than sweet Andrea) is that it comes with a clear stamp set that really helps take the pressure off as far as trying to draw a perfect face. I’ve learned a lot about shading, which is really something I needed. The class really is a great value and I highly recommend it if you are looking for an easy breakdown on face painting.

Also, for my birthday I received Mixed Media Girls by Suzi Blu. I’m just going to say that I think she is AWESOME and leave it at that. I can’t wait to sign up for some of her classes, but I think I need to get through LifeBook first. Between that and the new Frog Dog design team there isn’t room for much else, and I am ok with that. So here we are. I just wanted to share with you a few things that I’ve been working on in my art journals as a result of these classes and such.
This first sketch is done with just some basic shading with a Faber Castell Gelato:
This one was done with PrismaColor pencils:
This one was done with the PrismaColor pencils and Inktense blocks:
The next two are fully completed using acrylic paints, the PrismaColor pencils again, and the Inktense blocks, and Gelatos:
And a few sketches based on Suzi Blu’s book. I know these need quite a bit more work. Practice, practice!!! 🙂
And finally my project for Life Book 2013 – Week 16 – Bottoms Up with Aimee Meyers Dolich:
And that’s it for the day! Hope I didn’t overload you too much 🙂 Stay tuned for the reveals at Frog Dog Studios this weekend–so exciting!

This week I was able to play catch up with my LifeBook 2013 lessons. I can’t say enough about this experience, I have already learned so much!! The teachers are amazing and the work that everyone is putting up is truly inspiring. This week I was able to complete the lesson from Week 11-The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with Michelle Kral (also known as Misti B).This lesson was so liberating. The whole purpose is just to celebrate and embrace the good, bad, and ugly side of ourselves. We were encouraged to let our ugly out. Well, I feel like I certainly did. This piece is pretty hideous, but I finally felt something in myself just let go–I think for the first time ever. I usually worry over what people will think about my art and feel like it always has to be perfect, but not this time. Here it is, in all of it’s hideousness…
Pretty ugly, eh? 🙂
Now this week’s lesson was a total blast. We made “quirky birds” and used song lyrics that help to ground us and help us celebrate the “now”. Everytime I hear the song “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds I think of my husband. It’s a really beautiful song, if you’ve never heard it you should check it out. We made this as a really cool fold out accordion booklet. I may go back and do the back side with some more fun birds later on.
I hope you all enjoy your weekend! Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Continuing on my LifeBook journey, I’ve completed Weeks 10 and 12. Week 10 we celebrated heart connections with Tam. We filled in our heart with rolled paper containing short messages to our heart connections. I wish the picture could convey the cool 3D look of this heart. What a beautiful lesson this was, and a great reminder of how important people are in our lives.
Week 12 was Celebration and Connection with Mindy Lacefield. I’ve always enjoyed her style of art and wondered how she painted her adorable, whimsical faces. This was a great lesson for me, especially learning how to shade and create the faces. I’ve never been really good with faces, but she made this seem so easy. I like the primitive style of their faces. I realized when I finished the painting that I subconsciously ended up painting me and my son. This wasn’t my original intention, but I love how that’s how it turned out.
I am hoping this weekend to possibly get to Week 11, which is about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with Michelle Kral. I’m looking forward to it, but there were a few supplies I needed before I could start this one.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a Happy Easter! Thanks for stopping by 🙂

First of all, I have some exciting news! I will be teaching my first ever art journaling class at Seton Home. Seton Home is a nonprofit organization that supports teenage mothers and their children. This is a cause very near and dear to my heart, and I am so excited about the opportunity to work with the girls.
I fell far behind with my posts (and my classes) over the past few weeks for LifeBook 2013. There just never seems to be enough hours in the day for all of the things I’d like to do 🙂 I’m trying to get caught up with everything now. I think I’m only 2 weeks behind in my lessons. I wanted to share the last few projects that were done. Week 4 was a lesson in scales of light with Dion Dior. What a fun lesson, and very educational. I have a lot to learn about shading!
Next up was Week 5-Game Piece & Game Board with Kelly Hoernig. This was a great exercise relating to our goals for this year. I can’t say I was very happy with my gameboard. It’s pretty ugly, but I do like the way the little cards came out. I would like to alter more playing cards to use in the future for my journal.
Week 6 brought us a lesson from Tam herself–Celebration and Courage. I really liked this one! First of all, I learned how to draw an entire body. I’ve never done that before. Tam has a wonderful way of breaking it down and making it seem so easy. I was amazed at just how easy it really was. The second thing I loved about this lesson was she introduced us to masking fluid, which I have never used before or even heard of. You can bet that I will be using it plenty in the future. That stuff is awesome!!
Week 7 was an interesting interview with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. She is just amazing!! Week 8 was a lesson that I haven’t completed yet. I’m not sure if I will do it or not. I think it may be one that I will come back to later on. And finally Week 9-Painting over a Printed Image with Danita. This was a really fun technique. After finished this assignment, I realized I had done something similar before in my art journal. I enjoyed this lesson, even though it didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped. I couldn’t get one side of her face the way I wanted and the paper ended up bubbling and just getting messy so I gessoed that whole side and added some journaling instead.
All in all, I can say that I am enjoying the LifeBook class. I don’t feel like I’ve created anything outstanding, but I am really enjoying learning so many different techniques and meeting so many wonderful teachers. I’m looking forward to hopefully getting caught up over the weekend in time for the newest lesson on Monday. Wish me luck! 🙂
Have a great weekend!

With Lifebook 2013 off to a great start, I am feeling excited again about creating. Stress is not very conducive to being creative and there has been plenty of that in the last few months. Not bad stress necessarily, just the stress of everyday life in a busy household of 6 (7 when Ashley is home from college 🙂 ) Over the past week I have been plugging away bit by bit on our second assignment. It was a really fun little page, just documenting what we are grateful for now, and a few goals for the future. I’m really big on setting goals, so this was a fun way to interpret that rather than my boring notebook paper list that I usually do.

On this page I am still working with the Neocolor watercolor crayons, which I am learning how to work with better now. I find that I really enjoy blending these using my fingers. Maybe it’s just because I like getting my hands dirty when being creative? Anyway, after creating the background entirely with watercolor, I went to my one of my favorite background creators: the spray ink and stencils. I went easy with it, and was pleased at how it blended in with the watercolors. It added that boldness of color that I was looking for from the first assignment. I’m really trying to think about what I like and incorporate that into the lessons to try and make each piece my own. I feel like I’m getting there and it makes me happy 🙂 This piece is little bit cartoonish I think, and not my most favorite but I’m ok with that. I think it’s the whole “drawing” thing that’s throwing me for a loop.

I am so excited about doing LifeBook 2013! Here is what LifeBook is all about (taken from Willowing Arts):

“Life Book, a celebration and honouring of YOU is a year-long mixed media art class organised by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts. She is joined by 21 incredible art teachers who are all gearing up to share their mixed media techniques, tips and tricks with YOU! Themed around self-development and healing, you’ll be creating a minimum of 2 loose mixed media art journal pages per month (through a minimum of 2 lessons a month) which by the end of the year you will bind into a glorious journal (a Life Book)!”

One of my 2013 goals is to actively engage in mixed media art by taking online classes and continuing to learn new techniques. Our first assignment is to create our Fairy Art Mother. I’ll be the first to tell you that I am not very good at drawing. This is something I plan to work on this year. I tend to be a bit more abstract. This is also my first finished piece using nothing but watercolor crayons and a fine tip Pitt pen. Usually I create things with lots of layers and heavier colors. I tried to practice a light hand with this. I created my fairy art mother first as a sketch on my iPad, then freehand drawing her out on top of the watercolor background. I like the muted colors, but now finally realized that I am more about big, bold color. So I tried something new here as well as learned something about my art…definitely worthwhile!